For those who don’t know me, I was raised as an Air Force brat in North Pole. Maybe it is the former wrestler in me, but when it comes to Alaska’s future — and that of my family — I have a hard time sitting on the sidelines. Over the past decade, I’ve been square in the middle of all the fights over Alaska’s oil and gas policy. In those fights, I served a key legislative aide who fought against former Gov. Murkowski’s gas pipeline agreement, then as a special assistant to Gov.

A little over three years ago, the Department of Natural Resources recognized that the status quo for permitting wasn’t working.

More than 2,600 of our permits and authorizations were backlogged, to the detriment of many businesses and individual Alaskans seeking to access state lands and resources, and to the detriment of our economy.

In 2011, DNR committed to Gov. Parnell and the Legislature to drive down the backlog. In return, they supplied additional personnel and resources to DNR.